


you know my paper heart

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: Voyager, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover Pairings, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 16:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10745994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: For the fact that she has no idea where she is or what she’s doing, Leia has surprisingly little trouble fitting in on the StarshipVoyager, Home for Lost Souls.





	you know my paper heart

**Author's Note:**

> Last year, I wrote [a Janeway/Leia fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8282851) for femslashex. Shortly after that, I wrote a second one as a backup but never posted it. This is that second fic. (Title from John Mayer's 'A Face to Call Home'.)

When Leia wakes up, the first thing she sees is a man with no hair frowning down at her. It’s bright, wherever she is, and she goes to ask the questions burning on her lips but starts coughing before she can get the first one out. The man’s expression softens and he presses a hand to her shoulder to push her, gently but firmly, back down to the bed; it is only when he does this and meets resistance that Leia realises she’d been trying to sit up at all. 

‘Please,’ he says, running a scanner over her head and down her body, ‘try not to move. You had an accident and I’ve only just set your injuries.’

The lights are so bright, too bright; Leia scrunches her eyes shut and then another voice, further away, says, ‘Computer, lights to 30%.’

The room dims and she can see again – she lets out a breath of relief. ‘Where,’ she croaks, coughs again on the word, ‘where am I? Who are you?’

A woman appears in her line of vision, on the opposite side to the man; she has an elegant face, kind eyes, thin red lips. ‘My name is Kathryn Janeway, Captain of the Federation Starship _Voyager_.’ It is the same voice that had called for the lights. ‘We are currently in orbit of a small moon where you were in an accident. Your ship had crash-landed and we found you unconscious. We transported you aboard our vessel to treat your injuries, nothing more.’ She touches a light, long-fingered hand to Leia’s forearm. ‘You are not our prisoner.’ When Leia doesn’t respond, she asks, ‘What is your name?’

‘I am Princess Leia Organa of – of Alderaan,’ she says, and the wave of grief that accompanies the words hits her harder, this time, than it has in several rotations; the price for sustaining an injury to the head, she supposes; the price for forgetting, however briefly. There is no way her discovery by an Imperial ship would go down with so little violence or fanfare, so she says, ‘I recognise neither your name nor the designation of your ship, Captain. Are you members of the Rebel Alliance?’

A line forms between Captain Janeway’s eyebrows. ‘When you feel up to it, Princess,’ she says, ‘I think we have a few things to talk about.’

*

The grumpy bald man – just ‘The Doctor’ – finishes regenerating her skin and administering injections and releases her into guest quarters two days later. Before he lets her go, though, he brandishes a small metal ball under her nose and announces that he wants her to wear it.

‘Wear it?’ she asks, looking sceptically at the device. ‘Is that necessary? What does it do?’

These people have been kind to her, have treated her injuries and answered her many, insistent questions with patience and compassion, and her usually-trustworthy instincts are telling her that they are honest, that they mean her no harm. Despite that, her time in the cell with Vader has made her wary of shiny metal contraptions, and of the men trying to attach them to her skull. 

‘This is what we call a cortical monitor,’ the Doctor says, only a little condescending. ‘It will enable me to track the recovery of your brain from a distance. That way, if there are any complications, I will be alerted and can, if required, make immediate adjustments.’ He holds it out for her to inspect. ‘The monitor will cause you no pain, Princess. I recommend you wear it for your own safety, particularly on your first night out of Sickbay.’

She narrows her eyes at him, cataloguing his earnestness, and has just about decided that she might take the risk and believe him when Captain Janeway strides into the room and smiles at her. ‘Good morning, Princess.’ She walks right over to where Leia is sitting up on the bed; looks as though she wants to reach out and touch her, but doesn’t. ‘How are you feeling?’

There’s that sense of relief again, slight but no less distinguishable, that breaks the first smile of several days onto Leia’s face. ‘Rather well, Captain, thank you. I slept soundly.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Janeway says. ‘Do you think you—’

‘—I was just trying to convince the princess here of the sense of wearing a cortical monitor for the next couple of days,’ the Doctor says, interrupting her, and Leia has to bite back a smile when the captain gives him a withering look.

‘Am I completely recovered?’ Leia asks him instead of responding, a technique to buy herself a little more time.

‘Yes,’ the Doctor tells her, ‘and no.’

‘Doctor—’ Janeway starts, but the Doctor just shakes his head and looks down at his scanner, which he has once again started to wave around Leia’s head.

‘Surviving a shuttle crash of that magnitude is no small feat, Princess Leia, and it is no small trauma either. You sustained several broken bones, a haemorrhage to the brain, and only just escaped with your lungs intact. They would have been punctured through if it weren’t for the fact that you appear to possess an especially thick wall of tissue around your vital organs. Had our away team not found you when they did, you most certainly would have died of—’

‘That’s enough, Doctor,’ Janeway snaps, though Leia just finds herself studying him, fascinated, more intrigued by his dreadful bedside manner than bothered by it. On Alderaan, medical personnel are – _were_ – trained to be gentle, to speak softly and with the utmost respect for life and the things that might threaten it. This brashness is something Leia has encountered often in her role as a diplomat, but never before in a medical context. ‘…think she understands.’

‘It’s all right, Captain,’ Leia says gently, smiling despite herself. ‘This is not the first time I have been treated for serious injuries, and directness does not offend me. I would, however, prefer not to wear this device. If it will appease you, Doctor, I will report to you for examination again this evening.’

The Doctor looks irritated, then surprised, then almost pleased. Leia waits, her face schooled to openness, until finally, to her immense relief, he powers the monitor down and sets it aside. ‘Very well,’ he says, with a sigh. ‘I suppose I can have the computer relay updates on your progress in the meantime.’

She knows as good as nothing about the computer, or the ship, or any of the foreign-looking technology she’s seen here so far, but she still says, ‘Of course,’ and swings her legs around off the bed. She has decided to take his previous statement as permission to leave the room, whether or not it was intended as such. The first rule of diplomacy, her father always taught her: act as though it is so, and it shall be so. She can still hear him saying it in his soft, measured voice, his warm hand on her back or her shoulder—

She shakes the pang of memory away and turns to the Doctor. ‘Thank you for your care, Doctor. I appreciate it very much.’ She glances over at Janeway and finds her looking right back, eyes crinkling knowingly at the sides, lips pressed tight together on a laugh. 

*

For the fact that she has no idea where she is or what she’s doing, Leia has surprisingly little trouble fitting in on the Starship _Voyager_ , Home for Lost Souls. She makes friends with Kes and Harry, talks self-defence and tactics with B’Elanna, and rebuffs a few advances from Tom Paris in a way that makes him laugh and eye her with real respect. She helps out in the airponics bay or in the galley, preparing food, and on days free of crises, at the close of alpha shift, she ventures up to the ready room to drink coffee with Kathryn. 

She isn’t certain how it happened, how they fell into the routine or how she started thinking of the woman beside her as Kathryn instead of Janeway or The Captain, but it had seemed a natural extension of their natural rapport. A few weeks earlier, Kathryn had closed her hand over Leia’s and murmured, ‘Why don’t you call me Kathryn?’ and the little flutter in Leia’s chest, the warmth that spread out from Kathryn’s hand and down through Leia’s body, had seemed only to confirm that this was a path they were destined to take; something familiar and bright in this dimly-lit, foreign new life.

Kathryn hands her a fresh cup from the newly-stocked replicator – they have just left orbit of an uninhabited planet rich in natural dilithium, where they were able to quadruple their stores – and she folds herself onto the sofa beside Leia, long, lithe legs bending beneath her body in a way that makes Leia blush and glance away. Kathryn watches her over the rim of her cup for a warm, drawn-out moment before she asks, ‘And you really don’t remember anything?’

Leia smiles a little; she has expected this, this return to well-trodden ground. Kathryn circles and circles like a _cora_ bird and then swoops, can’t leave questions unanswered or mysteries unsolved, and Leia is both: the question, the mystery. ‘I don’t remember,’ she says again, and it is the truth. She inhales the fragrant scent of the coffee; she has grown accustomed to the taste in recent weeks, even fond of it, but she still believes the scent of it to be even better. The anticipation. ‘Every evening, before I go to sleep, I play the events over and over in my head, but nothing changes. It’s as though there’s a block in there somewhere. As though I’m somehow… not supposed to remember.’

Kathryn frowns at that; Leia has learned that she doesn’t like phrases like _supposed to_ , like _meant to be_ , like _no choice_. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ she says. ‘There is no medical explanation for your amnesia. The Doctor has been over and over your brain scans, has run every test he can think of and even some he thought up himself; he’s cross-referenced all sorts of unrelated cases to try to determine if other factors could be in play here. I’ve even taken a look or two at the data myself.’ She shakes her head. ‘According to every readout, you are once again perfectly healthy. Aside from the few remains of scar tissue the Doctor felt it too risky to remove, it’s as though you never even had an accident.’ Kathryn is watching her, a kind of appreciative admiration in her eyes. ‘You heal with remarkable speed, Leia.’

Leia shrugs. ‘I suppose it’s a trait of my species, though I never really gave it much thought before now.’ She grins. ‘Or perhaps I’m just special.’

Kathryn grins back, eyes shining; she takes a long, indulgent sip from her cup, and Leia tries and fails not to watch the subtle movement of her throat as she does. ‘Perhaps you are.’ The quiet stretches between them, a charged kind of comfortable, and then Kathryn says, for what must be the tenth time at least, ‘I just wish I could do more to help you.’

Leia laughs at that, the way she does every time, but this time she leans over and dares to close her hand over Kathryn’s knee, squeezing once before she leaves it there. ‘Kathryn, really, I wish you would stop saying things like that! You have rescued me from certain death, as your Doctor will so gladly remind us; you have given me a place amongst your crew though I can do little to assist you in your journey home—’

Kathryn looks as though she is about to protest, and Leia raises her other hand and presses her forefinger, brazen, to Kathryn’s lips; Kathryn looks surprised, but then her eyes start to darken, and Leia’s stomach does a slow flip. She smiles but moves the hand away and down to Kathryn’s shoulder, if only to calm her racing heart. ‘I am more grateful than I can tell you for your generosity, Kathryn. For your generosity and friendship, and for _you_. If you think that I could in any way resent you for the fact that you can’t tell me how I got here, then you are wrong.’ She glances down at her hand on Kathryn’s knee, small and strong, feels her own pulse beating in her wrist; glances up and sees an answering heat in Kathryn’s eyes, a heat she knows she isn’t imagining. ‘Where I come from, wherever it is, there isn’t—’ she swallows, forces down the sudden thickness in her throat. ‘There isn’t much left for me, anymore. There are good people, there is a cause, but… well. Perhaps it’s time I told you about it.’

The words come out more easily than she’d ever have expected – Vader, her capture, Alderaan, her family – and Kathryn just sits there and listens, nodding, asking few questions. Letting her speak. She grips Leia’s hand almost tight enough to hurt when Leia stutters out _Death Star_ and _helpless_ and _right before my eyes_ ; hears the story of Leia’s living nightmare unfold with an unabashed sheen of tears in her eyes.

When it’s over, she doesn’t say she’s sorry; she doesn’t need to. Tears beading on her long eyelashes, she laces her fingers through Leia’s and squeezes, strokes a gentle thumb over Leia’s wrist. When she can speak again, she just murmurs, ‘Thank you for your trust, Leia,’ and somehow, it’s the perfect thing to say.

*

The next morning, Leia oversleeps by two hours and wakes with a blinding, pounding headache. Her eyes wrenched shut, she fumbles about on the table beside the bed for her glass of water and knocks it over, the shards crashing loudly even over the carpeted floor. The sound reverberates, echoes around her quarters and her skull as though she were sitting in the huge old music hall in Central Aldera, and she manages to gasp out, ‘Leia to the Doctor, I need—’ before she collapses back onto the bed, unconscious.

For the second time in four rotations, she wakes up in Sickbay with the Doctor’s furrowed forehead looming over her. ‘Princess Leia?’ he asks. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Y—yes,’ she croaks out. Her mouth is dry. ‘What happened?’

‘You lost consciousness,’ the Doctor tells her. ‘In your quarters.’

‘When?’

He grimaces. ‘A little more than three days ago. Your brain seems to have rejected one of the procedures I performed to correct the damage to your hippocampus, and after you fell unconscious, you began to seize. I was able to undo the procedure and correct the damage with a prosthetic, but I’m afraid it will take more time for you to heal completely.’ He glances quickly away and then back down at her – is that guilt in his eyes? ‘I’m… terribly sorry, Princess. I had no idea your body would react so violently to the procedure, let alone after so much time had passed. It’s highly irregular. Nevertheless, I feel I ought to have been better prepared.’

Leia swallows twice, lubricating her throat, and manages a smile for his benefit. ‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ she murmurs. Normal speech still feels like too much of an effort. ‘I’m not angry. I know you did the best you could.’

The Doctor reaches out and pats her hand once, a show of affection or solidarity or gratitude that almost surprises her, and then, before Leia even has to ask, he says, ‘I’ve called Captain Janeway. She’s on her way.’

But she has fallen asleep again before Kathryn gets there, and when she wakes up again, Kes informs her that seven hours have passed since that conversation. ‘Seven hours,’ she echoes, disbelieving. ‘Is the captain still awake? May I see her?’

Kes smiles a soft smile, touches a gentle hand to Leia’s. ‘I’ll call her right now.’ It doesn’t escape her attention that Kes hasn’t actually answered either question.

She stays awake, this time, and when Kathryn arrives ten minutes later, uniform half-undone and lips pale, Leia knows she’s been pulled out of bed by the call. Kes disappears into the office with a soft offer to provide assistance if needed, and as soon as she’s out of sight, Leia leans up on her elbows and says, ‘I’m sorry, Kathryn, I didn’t want to wake you, I know you sleep so little as it is—’

But Kathryn is beside her already, leaning her hip against the bed, and the smile she gives her is all Leia needs to understand her apology is unnecessary. ‘I’m so glad to see you awake,’ Kathryn says. She has taken Leia’s hand in her own and intertwined their fingers, it seems without thought; she smiles, ruefully, gives the hand a squeeze. ‘I’m afraid you gave me quite a fright for a moment, there.’

The tiredness is already catching up to her, and Leia lies down again but smiles back. ‘I’ll try not to do it again.’

‘You’d better.’ Kathryn’s voice is playful but her eyes are full of emotion, relief and hope and something deeper and more complex than that. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m all right, I suppose, but I’m tired. I just don’t understand what happened or why.’

‘I don’t understand it either,’ Kathryn admits. Their fingers are still locked together, Kathryn’s cool and steady against her own. ‘The Doctor says your brain rejected the procedure he used to correct the damage from your initial injury. He said it was sudden and he had no way of knowing beforehand that there would be complications.’ She paused. ‘I’m sure that’s true, but…’

‘But?’ Leia prompts, when she doesn’t finish.

‘But somehow I’m not convinced this is a random reaction. The Doctor corrected all the damage to your brain and issued you a clean bill of health; there was no technology or prosthetic involved that could have triggered a response like this.’ She shakes her head, her face pale and serious. ‘I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some other explanation.’

But whether Kathryn has an idea of what that explanation could be, Leia never learns; the mere suggestion is enough to make everything click into place, and its implications turn her blood to ice, make her heart leap into her throat and lodge there. ‘Vader,’ she breathes. ‘He’s put something in my brain.’

‘Could it be?’ Kathryn asks. ‘From what you’ve told me—’

‘I’m sure of it,’ Leia says. ‘I can feel it.’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Kathryn murmurs, but Leia knows, deep down, the way she knew when her pet _traika_ wasn’t going to survive the summer, the way she knew she was born to fight, that this is it. This is the reason for her collapse, for her injuries, for her crash in the first place.

Vader. Again. _Still._

‘Computer,’ Kathryn says, ‘activate Emergency Medical Hologram.’

‘Please state the – aaah, Princess, good! You’re finally awake. What can I—’

‘No time for pleasantries, Doctor; we need you scan Leia’s neural tissue again, and this time adjust the parameters to include a search for foreign elements that might have been implanted into her brain.’

‘Microscopic,’ Leia adds. She squeezes Kathryn’s hand once for support, and Kathryn squeezes right back. ‘Try scanning for metal,’ she tells the Doctor, ‘with a celatarium base.’

‘Celatarium,’ the Doctor repeats. ‘That—’

‘—can be disguised by brain tissue,’ Leia says. ‘I know.’

‘It’s also extremely rare,’ the Doctor says, puzzled. ‘I fail to see—’

‘Please,’ Leia says. ‘I have reason to suspect it.’

‘All right, all right,’ he grumbles, moving over to the monitor. ‘I’m a Doctor, not a racehorse.’

Once they know what they’re looking for, it doesn’t take long to find it: a miniscule probe, attached to Leia’s brain stem, that they have to magnify to 450% before they can even see it on the screen. The Doctor is peppering them both with hot-tempered questions – how did they know? What is this about? What else aren’t they bothering to tell him? – but Kathryn quiets him with a few sharply-chosen words and a look to kill. Then she says, ‘Now, Doctor, the question is this: can you get it out without it resulting in further brain damage?’

Despite the situation, the look of grim determination on the Doctor’s face almost, almost makes Leia smile. There isn’t much else he can say but, ‘Yes, Captain. I will do my best or decompile my program trying.’

Kathryn brings in B’Elanna to confer, calls her out of bed and into Sickbay without an explanation, but her murderous expression disappears the moment she catches sight of Kathryn’s less-than-impeccable outfit, of Leia lying on the biobed, of the tiny but somehow still ominous bug on the screen. B’Elanna’s first move is to bark at the replicator for two coffees, black, and the way she and Kathryn both switch seamlessly into work-mode, shutting out all distractions, their attention completely focused on the task at hand, is a sight Leia won’t forget in a hurry. 

She is still tired, and though she tries her hardest to stay awake as they make preparations, Leia finds herself drifting in and out. It’s strange knowing they are all working so hard for the sake of a woman they’ve known for less than half a full cycle, but this is the kind of people they are: people who find a problem and fix it without question; people who help others without expecting anything in return. People who look after their own.

She is still lying in bed, groggy but awake, when Kathryn comes over and takes her hand. ‘Hi,’ she says, softly, tenderly, and beside her, B’Elanna’s eyebrows lift in surprise before she notices Leia’s gaze on her and the expression disappears.

‘Hi,’ Leia says back. ‘Any news?’

‘Good and bad,’ Kathryn says. She cracks a small smile. ‘Which one do you want to hear first?’

‘The bad,’ Leia murmurs, clamping down on the urge to yawn. ‘Always the bad.’

‘The bad news is we think we’ve worked out what the device does.’

‘It’s a tracker,’ Leia says. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ B’Elanna looks surprised. ‘How did you—’

Leia shrugs, a strange motion while she’s still lying down. ‘Just a guess.’

‘It is a tracker,’ Kathryn says, ‘but unfortunately it’s not only that. It’s also a weapon.’ She glances over at B’Elanna and then back down at Leia. ‘The technology is quite unfamiliar to us, but from what we can figure, it was designed to activate a potentially deadly chemical reaction in your brain at a specific time.’

‘At a specific time,’ Leia repeats. She blinks, turning the words over in her mind. ‘What time?’

‘We think it was… voice-activated,’ Kathryn says, so quietly that it feels like she’s only speaking to Leia. ‘Keyed in to certain words,’ she says, and her eyes are boring into Leia’s, almost as though she’s willing her to understand so she won’t have to say it—

—and then it comes back: the conversation in the ready room; the confession; the way she had opened up to someone – to Kathryn – for the first time since the awful half-cycle ago when she lost everything. Vader must have programmed the device to activate if she ever told someone what happened – if she ever talked about it. If she ever even tried to face the pain, to move on.

A wave of fury courses through her, so strong that she bolts up in bed, that she has started shouting useless threats to someone a million lightyears away until her throat is raw from crying, until tears are streaming down her cheeks; until Kathryn is holding her tight, cradling Leia’s head against her shoulder, arms strong around her and fingers soft in her hair.

She learns later that Kathryn prevented the Doctor from sedating her, told him she ought to be allowed to feel what she wanted to feel, and Leia’s gratitude at Kathryn’s understanding is galaxy-wide.

The good news, she learns too, is that the three of them – Kathryn, B’Elanna, the Doctor – have discovered a way to safely remove it. They have Leia read over the plan, take up one of her suggestions about how to preserve the rare metal following its extraction, and then the Doctor presses a hypospray to her neck. As she fades, she could swear she feels the ghost of Kathryn’s lips against her head.

*

This time, when she wakes up, the tiny device is sitting in a transparent storage unit beside her. She picks it up and peers inside; turns it around and upside down, but of course she needs to put it under the magnifier before she can see what’s inside it. It looks just the same as it did on the scan: dark and insidious, simultaneously miniscule and menacing. Leia tosses it down in disgust and calls for the Doctor, and he wanders in from the office with what looks like a genuine smile on his face, maybe the first she’s ever seen.

‘I see you’ve returned to the living,’ he says to her. ‘Welcome back. How do you feel?’

‘To be truthful, Doctor, I feel like I could use some time away from this place.’

He gives her half a smile. ‘I shall try not to take that personally.’

She smiles back. ‘What did you—’ but she’s interrupted by the arrival of Kathryn, tailed by B’Elanna, tailed by Harry, and she laughs as they come in, one after the other. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Have you decided to have your staff meetings down here from now on?’

‘’Cause it’s so comfy?’ B’Elanna smirks. ‘Great plan.’ She walks over to the bed and picks up the storage unit, shaking her head. ‘Unbelievable, huh? That such a tiny thing can hold so much power?’

‘Oh,’ Kathryn murmurs, her eyes dancing on Leia’s, ‘I don’t think it’s quite so unbelievable.’ She drags her gaze away and looks at B’Elanna. ‘Did you want to tell her?’

B’Elanna nods, puts down the unit and takes a step closer to the bed. ‘Once the Doctor removed the device, I was able to get detailed schematics on its operation. I’ve learned a lot about the technology – actually it’s given me a great idea for modifying the sensor array – but the important thing is… I ran several tests on the tracker to try to reverse-engineer it, but any time I came close to using it as a homing beacon, it shut down. When I tried to disable it from the inside, I nearly caused it to self-destruct.’ She tosses an irritated glance at it. ‘I was hoping we might be able to use it to get you back to your world, or at least figure out where that is, but I…’ she trails off, shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, Leia.’

Leia sits up and nods to show she’s heard her, but takes a moment to digest the information, the implications. What are the odds that her trying to use Vader’s tracker against him will result in disaster? What are the odds that he hasn’t programmed some kind of failsafe – like the self-destruct – to ensure she never make it back to the Alliance in one piece? For all she knows, he’s programmed the device to turn her into a sleeper agent for the Empire. It’s almost a miracle they were able to get it out without killing her.

Kathryn steps closer to her, lays a hand on Leia’s shoulder and leaves it there, a comforting weight. ‘What we do next is entirely up to you. This was your battle, your life in the balance; this was technology put inside you against your will. If you want us to keep it, to keep trying to find a way to use it as a homing beacon, we will. We can lock it up in storage behind a security force field. We can pull it apart and destroy it.’ Kathryn smiles at her, lopsided and lovely, and Leia feels her heart speed up at the sight. ‘Your choice,’ she says again. ‘No pressure, no rush.’

Leia glances down at the device and back up at Kathryn, at B’Elanna and the Doctor and Harry; at all these people in this place she should never have known but is so glad she does. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she says, but she knows she’s already made up her mind.

*

With the source of the problem removed, her head clear, she recovers even more quickly than she had the first time. Four days later, at the end of alpha shift, she weaves her way through people during changeover in the mess hall and heads up to the ready room. Tuvok, in the command chair, nods at her as she passes; he has grown used to her presence, to her turning up at regular – and sometimes irregular – hours to visit the captain. To her being admitted and only coming out one, two hours later. Leia buzzes and Kathryn lets her in, glancing up from her work with a smile; she even powers down her PADD and walks around the desk to greet her, to lead her up to the sofa where they have so often sat before.

Kathryn knows why she’s here and doesn’t bother with pleasantries, just fetches them both a cup of coffee and sits down beside her, close, her thigh brushing Leia’s. ‘I trust you’ve come to a decision?’

The coffee is too hot to drink, just yet, but Leia leans down to inhale it and nods. ‘I have. I probably made it straight away, if I’m honest, but I did think about it.’

‘And?’

‘I’m going to destroy it.’

‘You’re sure?’ Kathryn asks.

Leia meets her eyes. ‘Yes.’

Kathryn nods. ‘Very well. Have you thought about how?’

‘I first considered throwing it into the replicator and recycling it for parts, or maybe flushing it out the airlock, but I think the first would be too unsatisfying and the second too impractical. It may be irrational, but I would always fear that someone else would find the device and continue to use it for evil.’

Kathryn’s long, thin fingers are wrapped around her mug as she sips, and when Leia glances up, caught staring, she is met with a knowing smirk that makes her belly coil tight with heat. ‘I finally decided on a more old-fashioned approach.’ Her voice has turned husky, a sound she has never heard from herself, and she flushes with embarrassment until she catches the look in Kathryn’s eyes. It’s a challenge to focus enough to finish her sentence, but she manages. ‘I’m going to ask B’Elanna to make it self-destruct, then burn it down to scrap metal, and _then_ maybe flush it out the airlock as well. Like a ritual to get rid of it and all that it represents. What do you think?’

Kathryn takes a sip of coffee, licks her lips, and then sets the cup deliberately aside. ‘I think a ritual is a brilliant idea. In fact, I think I would very much like to help you seal that decision right now.’ The way she’s watching her… Leia licks her own lips, watches Kathryn’s eyes track the movement.

‘And what,’ Leia manages, setting her own coffee aside with trembling fingers, ‘what did you have in mind as a seal?’

‘Well,’ Kathryn murmurs, eyes twinkling, her voice a register lower than Leia has ever heard it, ‘I thought we might try out a ritual or two of our own.’ She reaches out slowly, carefully, and smooths a strand of Leia’s hair out of her eyes; she slides her thumb slowly, carefully across Leia’s bottom lip, allowing her every opportunity to say no, to back away.

But Leia doesn’t want to say no or back away; she wants her, wants this, wants everything that has been building and heating and simmering between them for so many moments for so many months. She has just opened her mouth to tell Kathryn exactly that when Kathryn speaks.

‘Leia, I just – I just need to be sure. You aren’t an official member of my crew, but I have granted you passage aboard this ship for as long as you wish it and… much as I love having you here, I would hate to think that…’

Leia is so astonished to hear her sounding anything less than certain that it takes her a moment to realise what’s coming.

‘I would just hate to think that you felt indebted to me for that, or obligated, somehow, to return my – my feelings, and I—’

She is blushing dark pink, charming, and Leia reaches out to touch a finger to her still-moving lips, an echo of the gesture from weeks earlier; her first brave act with this woman but not her last. ‘Kathryn,’ Leia tells her, firm. ‘I want you to listen closely to me.’

And she really is planning to speak, to twist all her diplomatic skills into a heartfelt, convincing speech that leaves no doubt in Kathryn’s mind as to the honesty and depth of her feelings; she really is. But when she looks up at Kathryn, at her lips and desire-filled eyes, at the blush still dusting over her impossibly high cheekbones, words seem something more than inadequate. Instead of speaking, she moves in and kisses her, fits their mouths together and strokes her tongue into the welcoming warmth that opens beneath her, kisses her until Kathryn is all she remembers.

Sometime later, when they come up for air – mussed and swollen and grinning on Kathryn’s ready room couch – Kathryn tangles her fingers deeper into Leia’s already-tangled hair and says, ‘I think I listened very closely,’ and Leia laughs, far away and free.


End file.
